Behind the scenes looks at MSU football’s #100Wins100Days series

If you’re a MSU fan and have been on social media, you’ve seen these posts.

They’ve been so good, it’s impossible to miss them.

Of course, we’re talking about the #100Wins100Days series the MSU football social team has been pumping out throughout the summer, counting down to opening night on August 31.

We were lucky enough to pry lead video producer Carter Ellwood and lead graphics designer Joe Robbins away from their editing bay for a few minutes to take a peek behind the scenes.

The Only Colors: So how long ago did you guys start planning for this series?

Carter: Joe and I probably talked about doing a 100 day series after the season, as early as February, but we didn’t put pen to paper until probably April.

Pouring through the Michigan State media guide, we kind leaned on each other in terms of coming up with the actual ideas and what the days were going to be. I would say that whole process, personally, I spent three whole work days literally hitting control-F in our media guide just trying to find stats.

(We made decisions like) do we want to go with deciding between a player or a stat? Doing big wins as some of the days? Our (sports information director) Ben Phlegar helped out in that aspect and gave us a rundown on numbered wins like “this was win No. 55 for Coach D.”

TOC: Were there any you thought of immediately?

Joe: You think of the big games that have been won under Coach D, and the Spartan legends like your Shiliques, your Connor Cooks and your Le’Veon Bells – like these are going to be specific for a day.

But some are really intricate, like Big Ten winning percentage and plus-55 turnover margin since 2010. There were some, like we knew Lewerke had back-to-back 400 yard games so we knew we had to hit on that. But the majority of ones required research.

TOC: What one was the longest one to work on?

Carter: The one that comes to mind that I poured the most into was pretty early on – it was the Shilique Calhoun one. I went to school when Shilique was here, so those highlights have a special place in my heart. That was the first legends video I did, so I wanted to make sure it was blown out with the Bane mask and the shrug emoji, so that one probably took two days of editing.

TOC: What’s the feedback been like from the players and coaches?

Joe: We’ve gotten some, they’ll come in our office and ask what the next day is going to be like. But it’s all positive feedback and that’s really reassuring.

And a lot of the alumni – that’s been really cool to see. You see Kirk Cousins commenting, Greg Jones, Le’Veon Bell and Plaxico Burress too. When you dig up some of those old stats and those impressive games those guys played in and put up big numbers, it’s really neat to see them interact with us and our content. That’s probably the coolest takeaway.

Carter’s Three Favorites

“I have a dry sense of humor, so when you make these masculine, jacked-up sort of videos all the time, it’s fun to make something more tongue-and-cheek and have a little fun with it.”

“I literally got to my desk and got to listen to that call for 4-5 hours.”

Joe’s Three Favorites

“There are a lot of things throughout the graphic people might not see or find. Like the ‘remove before flying’ tag – my cousin is a pilot and you always have to remove it, so I added that in there.”

“That’s where you get creative and it’s not black-and-white. We do 100 posts – you got to have fun with it and switch it up.”

Other Absolutely Fire Ones